1995-01-11 04:00:00 PDT Los Angeles -- In what sort of publication would you expect to read:

"Those people who are so mentally defective that they cannot live in society should, as soon as they are identified as defective, be humanely dispatched."

Or that Adolf Hitler's greatest offense was not the killing of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust but "the fact that his actions prevent a rational discussion of the creation of the master race."

These articles recently ran in the monthly newsletter of the Los Angeles chapter of the high-IQ societyMensa. The publication circulates to a membership that claims IQs in the top 2 percent of the public.

In defending her decision to publish the articles -- which appeared to propose extermination of the homeless, the mentally retarded, the old and the infirm -- newsletter editor and Mensa member Nikki Frey was unapologetic and surprised that anybody would be offended.

"I would not print anything I thought was truly harmful or offensive," she said. "I didn't think it was harmful; I don't think it's even that offensive -- nobody wants to have a deformed child.

"I personally wouldn't hurt a fly. Well, maybe a fly. I am the most sensitive person."

Not everybody thinks so. The articles in the November edition of the Mensa newsletter caused considerable outrage among the local chapter's 2,000 members. Some wrote irate letters, others called to complain. And several attended a board meeting to protest.

"We have these Nazi ideas being published in a publication that goes everywhere," said Mensa member Betty Schneider. "This is fascism carried to the 'nth' degree. I don't want to be identified with an organization that condones this type of thing."

Alan Stillson, puzzle editor of the newsletter, wrote a letter threatening to quit unless an apology was printed.

"As a Mensa member who enjoys the organization and most of the members and as a stepfather of a Down's syndrome child who loves him and is incensed at the thought of advocacy of his extermination, I insist on an immediate written apology and a retraction of the policy of printing hate articles," Stillson wrote in his letter, printed in the December newsletter.

In the previous issue, one of the writers, Jason G. Brent, a Tehachapi lawyer, wrote that "society must face the concept that we kill off the old, weak, the stupid and the inefficient." He concluded that the true travesty wrought by Hitler was that he forever spoiled the concept of a master race.

"It is not clear to me just exactly why anyone would expend time and effort and money on the homeless. What good are they? The vast majority are too stupid, too lazy, too crazy, or too anti-social to earn a living," Evans wrote. "Granted, there are a few people who have fallen beneath the blows of circumstances and are unable to afford any place to live, but they are few and far between. The rest of the homeless should be humanely done away with, like abandoned kittens."

Frey indicated she had no great respect for the opinions of the writers. Evans had published dozens of similar articles in the newsletter before she took over almost two years ago, she said.

"Evans used to have these articles month after month, 'Kill this group, kill that group,' " Frey said. "He used to have this crap in every month. He's such a blowhard; the things he says are . . . complete garbage."

Why print it?

"I don't get that many submissions, so I have to print whatever comes in," Frey said.

Brent, who wrote about population control, said, "I don't want to be portrayed as some weirdo person, though nobody else agrees with me.

"We cannot continue to have population explosion. Growth has to stop. We better face that we have to kill people. There are not unlimited amount of resources."

The way to trim the population, according to Brent, is to force people to purchase the right to reproduce. In his world view, children would not be allowed to inherit wealth, so everyone would start on a level playing field when it came to buying their reproductive rights.